The Long Road
by Determamfidd
Summary: (For Gigolas Week, day 7: AU) The world has changed. Middle-earth is no more. The Valar have departed, or they are dead. Only one remains to stir the dust of forgotten lands beneath his feet, waiting to fulfil his promise. (Gigolas)


_Okay, this was for Gigolas week on tumblr - Day 7 (AU). Yes, I know it is _horribly_ late._

_Better late than never?_

_xxx_

_Dets_

_..._

**_The Long Road_**

_..._

The world has changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air.

All that once was is lost, and I alone still live to remember it.

...

The race of Man inherited Middle-Earth, and glorious was their reign.

Glorious - and short. They faded like dew upon petals. My people retreated into the mists. The Dwarves vanished into their stone fortresses and never returned. The Orcs were nothing but cries and growls in the moonlight, soon replaced by the howling of the wind.

Long gone are the great Kings of Gondor and Númenor. Long gone are the beautiful towers and the mighty statues, their cities ruined and crumbled to nothing. I walked amongst the dust for long millennia and wondered: when would the day arrive? At long last, would I see you again, hear your voice once more? The rule of Man had failed. Did this mean that the battle of battles approached?

I do not know how old I am. Ages of the Sun have born, grown old and died, and yet I am still here.

Dagor Dagorath never came. The world span on, and I lived on, and I waited – oh _how _I waited. I watched as Man regressed back to its infancy and the world continued to turn. I watched as all the other Elves grew older and faded away, their centuries of life spreading them thinner and thinner until daylight could be seen through their bodies and their voices were but the calling of the wind. I watched as mighty creatures grew and swelled and filled the earth and the sea. They laid down their lives upon the scattered remains of the lands I once knew and loved.

My feet stir their dust too.

...

The continents groan and twist, and I groan and twist with them.

The sea comes to claim me once more, and I welcome the waves that batter these new and unfamiliar shores. I flee my refuge to find another, and my eyes pass over familiar-not-familiar sights, and I ache. The yoke of my years is heavy. How beautiful they were, these lands of my youth! How I resent that they have changed!

The mists that parted Aman from Middle-Earth dissipate. Aman is gone, swallowed by the hungry sea.

Erebor has drowned, as has Mirkwood. Gondor's corpse is a great swamp. The Misty Mountains have become a string of islets.

It is well that I have some experience at shipbuilding.

...

A great meteor hit the world, and I wake from my stupor to cry aloud in a tongue that had not been heard for two billion years. Was this it? Did the Battle finally begin?

Would I finally pass into a new life, one with healing and a pair of rough hands to welcome me?

But no. The Battle is a lie, and the Valar have departed – or died. I stand here upon the shore holding the shreds of their promises, and all around me the mighty reptiles wither and choke in the celestial dust. Their vastness and their beauty and their savagery, gone.

So much is now gone.

I return to sleep. Why stay awake? The next million years will be no different to the last, after all.

...

There was once an ape that walked upright.

I watched it incuriously.

It did not seem of any more or less importance than the billions of creatures who had come before it. At least the giant jewelled dragonflies had been beautiful.

...

In no time at all! It was so _fast!_

They have built a society. There are the beginnings of language. There is _harvesting_.

They are curious and brutish and brutal, but they are fiercely protective of their clans and they learn fast – so fast that I break my long isolation and venture out into the sunlight to observe them. They hoot and scream at me when I approach, and even holding my hands up to show my peaceful intent gives them no assurance. They hurl sharpened stones at me and the young ones strut and posture, swaggering and eager to display themselves for their elders with their hollow show of bravery.

I am far taller than these. They are not Men, not as I knew them. They are not Dwarves, though they are hairy enough (and the thought sends a sharp spear of pain through me – ai, that I have not lived long enough to be free of pain!). They are not small enough to be Hobbits, and they are certainly not Orcs.

(I would even welcome an Orc, now.)

They resemble Men more than any other race, but these are no true creation of Ilúvatar. I know – I _saw. _I saw them clamber down from the trees. I saw their shrewlike grandmothers scamper into burrows. I saw their amphibian great-grandmothers slither from the seas.

I wonder if Ilúvatar is dead.

It would be the final delicious cruelty.

...

There is a city!

It is crude, yes. The farming goes poorly. These new Men know nothing of crops or fields or seedlings. But there is a city! They organise themselves now – and some innovations are uglier than others. Cracks and divisions arise. A farmer with a better farm has more power and begins to curry favour amongst his fellows – and in no time at all, classes begin to form. They have begun to reduce their women to chattel. I am disappointed in them and in their new squat, ugly city – it is not all I hoped of them.

It is built upon the dust of Mordor. How very fitting.

...

They have also discovered how to build boats.

They appear to have natural talent.

...

They have begun to measure their years, and it is endearing to watch them struggle with the concept of time as I have always done. Always? No, not always – my days were once a smooth and seamless fabric, passing unending in the green-tinted twilight of my youth under the trees. Then you happened, my darling. You occurred like a meteor. And time was suddenly a quantity; limited, finite and precious beyond anything else in Middle-Earth. I could not hold or halt it. You knew all its secrets, but I was left to grasp at shadows.

I think I am perhaps two or three thousand of their new years. They count by the sun, and the shadows of the stars. These stars are unfamiliar to me now. Varda no longer smiles upon me, and Eärendil has burned in a great and glorious pyre. I cannot sing to these new, cold strangers. I have slept too long.

...

I cannot remember the light in your eyes.

I cannot remember the taste of your lips.

I remember that your hair was bright, but was it bright as the sun, or bright as the moon? I remember that it filled my hands and smelled like earth and lightning-struck stone and pipeweed – but what _is_ pipeweed and why does the very name make my nose wrinkle?

I cannot remember the touch of your hands, but I _do_ remember how I trembled.

...

I have attempted to approach them again.

I am too different. They startle and scurry away, their great dark eyes wide. They are afraid of my skin and my hair and my eyes, so unlike theirs. They threaten me with their weapons and I allow myself to be driven away.

I would have liked to learn their tongue.

...

They also have a rather less savoury habit of massacring each other.

...

The world is growing colder again. Many animals are dying, and I fear that many of the people will also. The oldest of the races of these New Men are hardier than their cousins, but they are fewer and fewer in number. They do not increase as quickly as their nimbler relatives. They are also shorter and far stronger. Perhaps I should have called them the New Dwarves?

I have made a friend in a small female of these older and hardier folk. She has shown me how they hunt. I have painted my handprint upon a cave wall. It looks so long and alien, compared to hers.

I remember that your hand was thick-fingered and broad, also.

She is gone in an instant, and her children do not survive the frosts.

...

Another city! And grandeur at last! I swathe myself in tanned skins to hide my hair and eyes, and walk amongst them as a beggar. They pour scorn upon me for my apparent weakness, but I am otherwise ignored. What a marvellous thing!

It is here that I glimpse the first clue, but I do not realise it until I am safely back in my cave, humming absently under my breath.

The New Men sing a tune that was born in Middle-Earth, under the light of Telperion's flower. It was an Elvish tune, a song of gladness for the spring rains. The words are different, the tongue that wields them unlovely and cumbersome in comparison, but the tune is just as Maglor wrote it, all those billions of years ago.

I blink, and then I dismiss it as a coincidence. There are a finite number of tunes in the world, after all.

...

I promised, my love. I promised to live. I promised to wait for your return, and for the renewal of all things.

I am still alive, though all promises are dead.

...

They learn so quickly. Soon, empires are marching across the map (I have gained several of these – some are ridiculously fanciful, and some have cleverly used the position of the sun and moon to trace the orb of the world, hanging in the void) and the foul rhetoric of Sauron and his master once again rings in the air. Those who have the secret of bronze may enslave their neighbour without reprisal. Children are burned alive to appease Gods that embody the angry seasons. One type of New Man is considered better than another. They mutilate each other gleefully, and call it honour.

I return to sleep in disgust. The New Men? Nay, the New Orcs!

...

More cities. More and more – I have slept well and deeply again, and the New Men have been busier than ants. They have covered the globe by now. Of their older cousins, the New Dwarves, there is no survivor.

I am fortunate that the New Men have not uncovered my sleeping-place. I cannot think what they would make of Elvish reverie. Would they believe me to be a statue? A monster, clad in whites and golds? Or perhaps one of their angry gods, laid in earth? They have a fondness for placing their gods and heroes in the ground, to rise again one day to lead them to a great and glorious future.

I could tell them that it does not work that way. That which returns to earth, belongs to the earth. She does not give back what is hers. And great and glorious futures are the lies we tell children so that they will endure yet another day spent in a mediocre and mundane present.

...

Legends spring up, wherever I roam. I am unsurprised by the names they give me: the Fair Folk, the Shining One, the Deathless, and so on. Some think me a herald of woe. I laugh to think how Mithrandir would react to that!

...

The cities are filthy! Smoke belches into the air like the fires of Mount Doom, and everywhere people are forced into tiny, arbitrary roles that only emphasis their smallness. Disease is rampant. Children die (children!) for lack of food. It is not considered important – children are not considered important!

How angry you would be, my love.

I disguise myself once more. It is far, far easier this time to pass unnoticed – the first time, some forty thousand of their years ago, the New Men were far more rare, their clans tightly knit. A stranger was a thing to be wary of. The second time, eleven thousand years ago, they were becoming both more and less: more numerous and powerful, certainly, but less concerned with each other. I was able to hide in their number.

Here I suspect I would be able to uncover my hair and lift my alien eyes to theirs, and they would not give me a second glance. Life is cheap now.

I do not have any of the coin they use to purchase goods and food. It matters not. I cannot speak the dialect of this place clearly. This is of no account – the New Men of this country have been rapacious. People from all lands are here, some as slaves, some as freedmen, some as prisoners, some as even less than that. Many do not speak the same tongue. I am just another filthy foreigner.

And here I stumble over the second clue. A beautiful, haggard woman is dragged into the street and her clothes are pulled from her body to leave her shivering in a shift. I watch in awestruck horror as her mouth forms words that are billions upon billions of years dead.

The woman is entreating Elbereth to hear her.

Around her, the people roar and mutter. Some call her blessed, the new coming of Saint Joan, and some denounce her as a witch.

I push through the crowds to the woman, and whisper in her ear. She freezes as I speak the ancient words: _Pedir edhellen. Ci a mellon. Heniog?_

She turns to me, her eyes widening.

"_Iston i níveg_," she says.

I frown. She cannot ever have seen me before. "_Man ci?"_ I whisper, but before she can speak she is torn away by ecclesiastical hands and thrown into a churning river. They have decided she is touched by devils, and this is the test of her purity.

She surfaces once, her eyes wild. "_Im Undómiel estar_!" she manages, and then she is gone.

I retreat in horror and fear. There is no possible way she could have known that name. She could not have ever known that tongue.

Yet she spoke it, and she died.

I am trembling as I hide myself in sleep again.

...

Now I am full of a new fire. If the Evenstar could be reborn amongst the New Men, who else has lived again while I slumbered? Who else has walked past me all unknowing as I swathed myself in rags and hid in shadows? Did a Hobbit peer at me behind the eyes of the ape-men of millennia past? Did an Orc bestride the world when the ships were ordered out to crush the lives of other peoples?

I must know. I must. I darken my hair with inks and smear dust upon my skin to hide its luster. The New Men are clever with their artifices and pigments, and it is easy to procure these. My eyes I can do little about, and so I wear the smoky circles of polished glass to hide their Elven shine. A hat pulled low conceals my ears, and kid gloves adorn my hands. I look ridiculous and you would laugh at me, but thus garbed I venture out into the world once more.

I book passage on ships and see animals the like I have never seen before. Huge creatures with patterned hides, beasts that resemble Oliphaunts but for their smaller scale, and armoured lizards like tiny dragons, their mouths open and gaping along the banks of great rivers.

The lands are so different. But I recognise the line of the Misty Mountains still, rising through the ocean as an archipelago. Snow no longer dusts the shoulders of Caradhras. Far to the south, Orodruin still belches fire. The New Men have given them another name.

I hear a snippet of the speech of the Rohirrim in the rolling cadence of a reindeer-herder. I see the hard and proud art of the Dwarves in the designs of nomads in the desert. I see the happy life of the Hobbits recreated in a small clan of corn-farmers.

Is this the second song? Is Arda finally to be remade? If so, this is not how it was told in the beginning.

This is not what was promised.

...

They have discovered the bones of the giant reptiles that ruled the world for so long.

They are _extremely _confused. It is most amusing.

...

I have found Pippin!

At least I think it is Pippin. Or was, once upon a time long dead. The young man is feckless and cheerful, and he sings incessantly and smokes constantly. He has dark hair and dark skin in this life, but it is still very curly and he is still wreathed in beaming smiles that light up the room. He is called Simon.

I attach myself to him immediately. I will be a strange and faceless benefactor, and he will not see my face, but I will know him.

He takes it all in stride, child of the kindly Shire. I present myself as a friend of his family, and he nods and grins. He has a large, noisy and well-to-do family: this is no surprise. He asks me to take off my shawls and I demur politely, and he shrugs and chatters on about his new job. He is a baker – naturally a Hobbit will gravitate to food – but he is less than enthusiastic about the early mornings and the backbreaking labour involved. He does not seem upset that I will not show my face. I suspect he thinks I have some great physical deformity.

I watch him grow and change. He is still clumsy in the extreme, still irrepressibly curious. I must constantly remind myself to call him 'Simon' and not 'Master Took', 'Pippin' or even 'Pip'. He kneads his unleavened dough whilst humming little tunes that 'come to him', not remembering that they were written by Bilbo Baggins in a whole world removed. I watch as he falls in love with a beautiful young man, as he grows older and bolder and wiser. As before, Pippin is forged over time and hardship: his country suffers a plague and all around him his family falls as though their strings are cut.

Pippin attacks the job of feeding the sick and poor and hungry with all the fervour he once used to attack a troll.

He falls ill eventually. Inevitably. I sit with him and feed him broth and flatbread that is not nearly the equal of his own. He coughs and tells me so, a faded twinkle in his dark eye, and I smile under my shawls and nod.

"Rest now," I tell him.

"Oh pish to that. I shall be resting soon enough, I should think. And don't tell me a pretty lie, I know I am dying," he says, and he squints at me for a long minute.

My heart can yet grow heavier, I discover. I have loved this young Man, loved him just as dearly as I loved the happy young Hobbit. "Nevertheless, humour me and rest," I say, and my voice is thick.

"You know, I should like to see you before I go," he says, and his thin, sticklike fingers rise to touch one edge of my shawls. "I would like to put a face to the kindest and most generous of my friends. Will you?"

I pause, and then I bow my head. "I do not wish to alarm you."

"Don't be absurd. You are Master Bowman, are you not? I promise, whatever horrors lie beneath your wrap cannot be more frightening than some of the foolish imaginings of my youth. Goodness, I scared myself silly before I grew up and pulled myself together. No matter what it is, yours is the face of my friend, and I would see you and know you before I go."

I sigh in defeat, and then one by one I take off my wraps. Pippin's eyes widen, and then he gulps.

"You aren't human, then."

I shake my head.

"You weren't just a friend of my father, were you? You've known my family a _lot _longer than that."

I raise my gaze to his, and remove the smoked glass circles. The room abruptly springs into light. Even Elven eyesight may grow dim in unending darkness. "I saw your ancestors sail over the seas," I murmur. "I saw their ancestors climb down from the trees, and theirs slither from swamps. I cannot tell you how old I am, for I confess I do not know."

Pippin bites his lip. "Why me?"

"What?"

"Why choose me? You could have raised Kings and Princes! You could have engineered empires!" He reaches out to touch my skin, and seems utterly dumbfounded to find it as warm and living as his own. "Why an addlepated baker in a nothing town in a tiny corner of nowhere?"

I cannot tell him the truth. I cannot.

I do not have to, as it turns out. Pippin slumps back upon his pillows, and his face fills with a strange awe. "You mean..." he breathes, and then pain crosses his eyes and he must cough for two straight minutes. When he is able to talk once more, he grabs my hand and glares at it for a moment.

"Yes, in the dream you were an archer. You held a bow in this hand..."

I find I cannot move, all my limbs suddenly frozen in shock. "In the dream?"

"You are there, yes, do keep up." Pippin scowls, and he coughs again. "I have dreams, strange ones. I saw odd, fantastical folk in them, and I dismissed them as nothing but fancies and stories for children to laugh at. There were humans, but also there were little folk and I was one of these- "

"Hobbits," I say, and tightly grasp the weak hand that holds mine. "You were a Hobbit, Peregrin Took."

He sucks in a breath. "Hobbit," he say slowly, and then he smiles. "It sounds well enough. Why do I remember someone calling me a fool?"

"That would be Gandalf," I say, and I am smiling through my tears. "The Wizard."

"Is he here too? Am I to discover he has been masquerading as the laundress, or the like?"

I laugh, wetly to be sure. "I shouldn't think so. I have only found one other – Arwen, the Evenstar. She died several centuries ago now."

"No other..." Pippin gropes for the word.

"Elves," I supply, and oh, it feels so strange to say it aloud. I have been secret and silent for so long. "No. I am the last. I promised to live, and I do."

"Then you are all alone?" Pippin frowns, and another choked cough escapes him, rattling his too-thin chest. "No, that won't do. You had a friend, the dearest of friends..."

"Aye," I say, and I know I cannot disguise the sudden hunger in my eyes. My longing flares anew with a fervour that frightens me. "I have not found him."

Pippin's nose wrinkles, and then he sinks back into his pillows. "Well, when you find him, don't make this mistake again. Don't tiptoe around the issue with dainty little cat feet, it will only irritate him."

It would, too.

"Did I really kill a great monster?" Pippin blurts, and I must throw back my head and laugh. I have found a member of the Fellowship and I have loved him as my family once again – and once more, time and decay are taking him away.

We speak of a world long-vanished, of Elves and Hobbits and a desperate fight against an ancient evil, long into the night. He does not mention you again, my love. I think he could see how much I ache for you, and Hobbits are kindly creatures at heart.

Pippin Took dies for the second time as the sun rises. I replace my wraps and retreat from the world once more, and in my solitude I weep for the brief bright flash of a life that was mine again, for such a small moment.

All things die. All things must fade.

I know it. But even after billions upon billions of years, I cannot help but wish it were not so.

...

I take to my travels again. I see Balin son of Fundin rise as a powerful and beloved politician, and I wonder what you would have made of that. You would have been proud, no doubt.

I see the spirit of Fëanor reborn, his hands as agile and his mind as quick as ever. He is an inventor now, and he changes the shape of the world again with what he creates. And as ever, great woe is born from his greatest works: the New Men have increasingly ingenious methods of destruction at their hands.

The globe is shrinking. My bolt-holes are growing less safe. It is more and more likely that in their rush to quantify and scale every inch of their inherited world, the New Men will discover me. I must prepare.

My long-held sanctuaries I abandon, one by one. I make investments, I buy property. Upon one, I have a house constructed (I would do it myself, but I fear it would gain too much attention). It is situated deep in the embrace of woods that have stood since the time of the Druids. My workers complain, but I pay them well enough to make the work worth their while.

Once it is complete, I move myself and my small collection of belongings to the house. It is built of good hardy stone, hewn from the nearby hills. I think you would approve.

...

I am in love with their new and powerful motor carriages, with the newspapers that flutter in the wind, the words tossed away to be replaced in a matter of hours. I love their sleek clean limbs, the vast differences in hair and eyes and skin everywhere I look. I love their aggression, their passion, the way they meet my eyes and demand to be recognised as a fellow soul moving through the world.

I am barely extraordinary anymore. In a land where people use their bodies to express their personalities, where paints are used to dramatic effect, skin is a drawing-board, ears may be a canvas and a face is mutable day-to-day, my hair is hardly the most unusual thing these people have seen. Sometimes I am complimented upon it, but mostly I pass unnoticed. I have even had people asking where they can get 'the ear surgery thing, that is so cool!'

I read about how Thorin Oakenshield has become an ousted warlord in his own nation and now vies to take it back with fire and force. I see the spirit of my dear Tauriel in the clear-eyed determination of an athlete at the Olympics. I howl in horror as Théoden-King is assassinated.

Saruman thunders from a televised pulpit, and Beren leads a revolution.

All around me, the old is reborn into the new. But you do not appear, no matter how I search.

...

My house needs rebuilding. I masquerade as my own great-grandson, and hire a firm that is highly recommended. It has nothing but positive reviews online.

I love computers.

The builders are loud and bluff and amazingly skilled and tell each other crude jokes. They take a break every few hours to smoke and drink tea or disgustingly sugary drinks that make my lip twist. I would give much for a mouthful of miruvor.

It takes weeks, but eventually the work is nearly complete. My house has a new roof, and the floors have been stripped and replaced with new timbers. My feet sigh over the silky feel of ash beneath their soles, and I touch my stone walls and look out from my windows.

I am no longer isolated in the middle of a forest. A town has grown up around me, and the woods are nearly gone. I miss their voices dearly. There is a petition on the internet to save the remnants of it, and I send it onwards into the electronic nowhere with a fervent prayer.

They have discovered one of my boltholes. They are very puzzled about the paintings of hands upon the wall. The Neanderthal woman's hand, they can discern readily enough. But mine is giving them trouble.

My workers return to finish my house, and I retreat to the inner rooms. I still wear my dark glasses, but no more is needed to disguise me in this day and age. And dark glasses come in such a range of elegant shapes and sizes now that I can amuse myself for a good ten minutes, trying them on in a mirror.

It is on one such morning that I hear a voice that stops me dead.

"But da, I'm _twenty!_ Why bring me on-site if I'm not to be of any use?"

"I don't care, and it's so you might learn something. You're bright but you haven't the qualifications. You're not to go up in that harness, nor put a hand to a rope, until you've finished your rigging certificate. I'm not going to trust my life and those of our friends to your knots and equations until you know what the hell you're doing."

"But I've been doing it all my _life!_ I can get those stones trussed in two seconds flat, you know I can! You can't be serious!"

"I am deadly serious, my boy."

"I _can_ do it, da..."

A sigh. "I don't doubt you. But go and get your certification, yes? You should know better than to think of it. Let's tick all the boxes and cross all the T's, all right?"

The young, deep voice grumbles for a moment, and then there is a grudging, "don't see why I can't just sit the exam straight away, I _know_ the work."

"Because there is a right way to do things, my lad, and a wrong way. Best get in the habit of doing things the right way, aye?"

Another sigh. Then the young voice speaks again, but it is older and stronger somehow. "I will always choose the right way," it says, and it is not a young man's sulking concession, but the firm oath of a warrior. "You know I will."

I have forgotten the colour of your hair, and the smell of your pipeweed. I have forgotten the taste of your mouth and the touch of your nimble, thick-fingered hands. I have forgotten the exact shade of brown that was your eyes, and I cannot recall the warmth of your breath against my neck.

I slap my hands over my mouth. My eyes are wet, and my breath is coming fast.

I have never forgotten your voice. How suitable that you should be arguing.

I tear off my dark glasses and send a wild glance at the mirror. I am dishevelled, my hair everywhere. With trembling fingers I quickly braid my hair into a style I have not worn for the life-age of a star. I rip off my comfortable hooded shirt with its brand logo and replace it with a green one – similar enough, I pray, to spark a memory. I can barely do up the buttons.

Will you know me, as Pippin said you would?

Did you dream of me?

When I round the corner, my stomach twisting in knots and my steps light again as they have not been for millennia, you are sitting there.

Oh, your hair is _red_! So very red! I nearly fall to my knees. I nearly break into song. I nearly choke upon new tears. I nearly do a hundred different things – but as it happens, I definitely stand there, dumbfounded, staring at you.

You are puffing upon a thin black cigarette that smells rather spicy compared to the other white ones that many of the workers smoke. You sit upon the half-finished wall, glaring up at where the crane hovers over the arch, new building stone suspended in its chains.

Your father has gone and I wonder if it was Glóin, before the thought is lost in the maelstrom that is my mind as your eyes turn to me.

"Hello," you say easily, and grin. "You must be the owner. Wasn't expecting to meet you, I heard you were a bit of a recluse. I hope you don't mind the filthy habit." You wave your cigarette in explanation.

"I..." I falter. Your smile is broad and beautiful. Your eyes are dark, and your hands are huge. You are short again! How appropriate. How wonderful.

"Are you all right?" you say, and then you stand up to crush your cigarette under a heavy heel. Your face creases in concern – how beautifully expressive you are! - and you take a step towards me. "You're not sick or something, are you?"

I shake my head, speechless.

You frown. "Not speaking? You know, you look very familiar. Have we met? Do I know you from somewhere?"

I can barely breathe around the hopping, jumping mass of my heart lodged in my throat.

"Oh, meleth nîn," I say, and it is cool water in the desert to finally say those words again, "you have _no_ idea."

Your beautiful eyes widen, and the ruddy cheeks pale beneath that short, elegantly trimmed beard (oh, I will miss the great and generous waves of your beard, my love). Then you take another step closer and your voice deepens even more. "Perhaps not," you say, and your words are suddenly touched with the burring cadence of a Dwarvish accent. "Perhaps so."

I cannot stop myself. I cannot. I stumble to you, and your hands catch me, as they have ever done, and I am so old – so old now that I redefine the word – but I am young again in your arms.

You breathe out, and I breathe in.

The sudden hitch in your voice is the sweetest music I have ever heard. "I thought you a dream," you say, and one finger reaches out to push my hair back behind my ear, revealing the point. "I thought..."

"I waited," I say, and I am smiling so hard I think my face will break. "I waited."

"You waited," you murmur, and the touch of your hand upon my face is like the kiss of the sun after winter, I _remember now – _"I am sorry to have been so tardy."

"You stupid Dwarf," I say, and your kiss tastes like victory and desperation and pipeweed, I remember it all! I steal another, and another, and I cannot stop. I cannot. You are addictive. "_Centuries_ would have been tardy, you contrary creature, and now I am billions upon billions of years old. You must find a better word than 'tardy'; it does not do the matter justice at all!"

"Aye," you say, and all the tears I have shed could fill the oceans a million times over and they would still be worth this moment. "Billions of years, laddie? There is no word in any tongue to do it justice. Billions upon billions... Well, they look good on you."

"Gimli, I waited so long," I name you, and you press a choked noise into my shoulder. I give in, and push my hands into that crinkly, coarse wealth of red hair. It is almost alive against my palms. "Gimli, what I have seen - I saw the dinosaurs die. I saw life crawl out of the oceans. I saw Middle-Earth smash itself into ruin, the very ground screaming beneath my feet – I have seen – I have-"

"Shh, Legolas," you say, and I am weeping, great gulping sobs over your bright head. "I am here now. I am here. Where you go, I will follow."

"You take your damned time doing so," I gasp.

Then you smile and press your forehead to mine, and your eyes are the deep brown of the chestnut tree, warm and rich, with highlights of green and gold around the rims. "Well, I am not so fast as you," you say gently.

"Do not ever leave again," I manage, and my hand is fisted tightly in your hair. It must hurt, but you say nothing. "Do not _ever leave me alone again!"_

You kiss me. And then kiss me again, and though you are taller than a Dwarf now and your beard is strangely cropped and your earrings are different and you have no markings upon your chest or shoulders or back, you are wonderful in a way nothing else has ever been before or since.

...

The stars are new, but I do not care anymore. They smile upon me just as brightly as the old ones did.

When you die, you will be back for me. I know this now. I no longer doubt. You will always come for me, and I will always know you. I will stay my feet upon my long and weary road, while you take the short path. I will watch and care for the humans, my New Men, as they make their way amongst those bright, brilliant stars. Perhaps they will find _Eärendil_ after all. And you will live again and again.

I will not falter. I will wait. I will live for these lifetimes with you by my side. I will not despair, my darling.

Faithless is he who says farewell when the road darkens, after all.

...

END.


End file.
